Subsuming other network resources under Croquet

Wow, Thanks for the detailed and informative information below.  I'm based in the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Science and am part of a small group beginning to explore the potentialities of OpenCroquet and for the world.  I'll go over your valuable information below in detail with our team.

Warm regards, Eric

From: Howard Stearns <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [croquet-user] Subsuming other network resources under Croquet
To: [hidden email], [hidden email]
Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2008, 6:31 AM

There are at least three ways to look at subsuming applications within  
Croquet:

* 2D legacy applications can be used just as they are, on a panel  
within a Croquet world.  The application itself does not change, but  
benefits from collaboration by being presented as a sort of virtual  
computer within the 3D scene.

There are several ways to do this -- mostly through network  
interaction/display technologies like X, VNC, RDP and similar.   The  
Croquet code has some general "embedded application" machinery that  
allows one of two things to happen (with variations, of course),  
depending on the approach that your world's Croquet architect wants to  
take:
	- Some network interaction/display technologies allow clients to  
"share" a display, so that the multiplexing of I/O to many users is  
really done by the server for that technology, rather than by  
Croquet.  Each Croquet participant's embedded app acts as a shared  
client to a server that is running the app.
	- Alternatively, a Croquet host (which may be any one of the Croquet  
participants) acts as a funnel to the application/display technology,  
which does not "know" that it is being shared. All user input may be 

replicated by Croquet to all the participants where it can be ignored  
by everyone except the designated host who forwards it to the  
application. The host then replicates screen updates though Croquet to  
each client.

Another architectural or user choice may be whether a single legacy  
application is shared, or a whole machine's desktop.

For examples on how to implement this, see the discussion threads on  
VNC and RFB in Croquet and Cobalt.  To get a feel for how this works  
in a commercially tuned implementation, get a trial account of Qwaq  
Forums.


* There's a lot to be gained by converting some applications to really  
be first-class in-world 3D applications, rather than being projected  
onto a panel.  Let's look at your Web subsumption example.  I think  
the above approach is something like having an embedded object player  
within a Web page, such as some dedicated Active-X object, or movie or  
Flash player.  The non-Web content appears within the Web page and is  
useable, but it doesn't interact with the other content in the Web  
page.  You can't, say, drag something from one embedded Flash movie to  
another on the same Web page (unless you do some extra-curricular work  
to make it happen).  An html scraper (for indexing, or semantic  web,  
or RSS feeds, etc.) cannot make direct use of the embedded content.   
Going back to Croquet, a Croquet application that lets you manipulate  
and take apart and re-combine Croquet content could not directly do so  
for the above embedded panel approach.  Re-writing applications to be  
more "natively in Croquet" is more analogous to the legacy client- 
server business applications that were re-written for the Web.


* Underneath both of the above, there are a number of possibilities  
for subsuming not just applications, but technologies and protocols.   
Just as the WWW (defined as html + http + url) "plays well with
other"  
technologies, so does the core Croquet model (Tea Time).    See, for  
example, http://opencroquet.org/index.php/The_Core_Model and
http://opencroquet.org/index.php/Off-Island_Resources

-H

On Jul 6, 2008, at 1:24 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

>
> Hi there, The web begain with ability to subsume other network  
> resources - such
> as usenet groups, gopher lists, and printers - under itself via  
> linking.  Any
> such resource could be respresented and accessed via a hyperlink on  
> a webpage.
> This of course accounts in part for the webs enormous reach.
>
> My question here is, to what extent does Croquet offer the same  
> 'subsumption
> power'.    I understand, for example, that I can subsume webpages  
> and internet
> resources via Croquet.	But how does that work?
>
> Also, what about other applications?  Can I run other windows or Mac
> applications inside a Croquet world on my desktop, and then share that
> application in a Crquet world/window with other Croquet users over the
> internet?
>
> Any guidance on these matters would be appreciated.
>
> Eric Sommer, CEO, ChinaDesk (www,chinadesk21.com), Beijing, China